“A writer, or any man, must believe that whatever happens to him is an instrument; everything has been given for an end. This is even stronger in the case of the artist. Everything that happens, including humiliations, embarrassments, misfortunes, all has been given like clay, like material for one’s art. One must accept it. For this reason I speak in a poem of the ancient food of heroes: humiliation, unhappiness, discord. Those things are given to us to transform, so that we may make from the miserable circumstances of our lives things that are eternal, or aspire to be so.”

Jorge Luis Borges

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“One thing I know about color is that it usually doesn’t work straight out of the paint tube.”

Charley Harper

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“It was so important to have center places. Now, instead of five hundred artists there are fifty thousand in New York. There is no center. Max’s Kansas City was central to us.”

Taylor Mead

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“I remember standing on a street corner with the black painter Beauford Delaney down in the Village, waiting for the light to change, and he pointed down and said, Look. I looked and all I saw was water. And he said, Look again, which I did, and I saw oil on the water and the city reflected in the puddle. It was a great revelation to me. I can’t explain it. He taught me how to see, and how to trust what I saw. Painters have often taught writers how to see. And once you’ve had that experience, you see differently.”

James Baldwin

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“Cultures that may seem as durable as stone can break like glass, leaving all the things that held them together unattended. I believe that the craftsman, the artist, the cook, and the silversmith are peacemakers. They instill grace; they lull the world to calm.”

Anthony Shadid

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“She is forty-five and austerely handsome, with large eyes the color of coal and a wide, upturned mouth that often gives her a wry expression. She wears sneakers, black trousers, a wool cardigan with elbow patches—the indifferent wardrobe of someone who devotes her energy to looking rather than to being seen.”

Emily Eakin

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“To the young artist who may be reading this: consider the possibility that you might actually be lucky when you get rejected from stuff. Because of this streak of what appeared to be bad luck, I fell into my life as it is today.”

Lisa Yuskavage

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“Were all these writers and artists more fragile than ordinary human beings or do we just know their names? It does seem as if there is a peril association with gift, a proclivity to break your brain just as professional skiers may be apt to break their legs as they swoop downward through wind and snow. It may be that to see and tell the story of human error is to dare to expose yourself to the sacred flash of truth that can drive you mad. Or are you mad to try in the first place?”

Anne Roiphe

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“He was the artist of my life.”

Patti Smith

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“There is as emphatically a morality expressed in Babylonian architecture or Baroque architecture as if it were plastered all over with Biblical texts. Now in the same manner there is at the back of every artist’s mind something like a pattern or a type of architecture. The original quality in any man of imagination is imagery. It is a thing like the landscapes of his dreams; the sort of world he would wish to make or in which he would wish to wander; the strange flora and fauna of his own secret planet; the sort of thing that he likes to think about.”

G. K. Chesterton

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“It is said that children do not distinguish between living and inanimate objects; I believe they do. A child imparts a doll or tin soldier with magical life-breath. The artist animates his work as the child his toys. Robert [Mapplethorpe] infused objects, whether for art or life, with his creative impulse, his sacred sexual power. He transformed a ring of keys, a kitchen knife, or a simple wooden frame into art. He loved his work and he loved his things. He once traded a drawing for a pair of riding boots—completely impractical, but almost spiritually beautiful. These he buffed and polished with the devotion of a groom dressing a greyhound.”

Patti Smith

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“I am from a family of artists. Here I am, making a living in the arts. It has not been a rebellion. It’s as though I had taken over the family Esso station.”

Kurt Vonnegut

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“The basic question here is whether you think life is a wonderful condition, or not. I don’t, particularly. Amazingly enough, it’s not entirely to my liking.”

Jasper Johns

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